Cormac McCarthy: Man

Cormac McCarthy is American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Cormac McCarthy: 540   quotes 7   likes

“I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Stupidity , Intelligence , Thinking

“There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Women , Forgiveness

“Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

Source: The Crossing

Knowledge

“How would you know if you were the last man on Earth? He said.
I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it.
Nobody would know it.
It wouldn't make any difference. When you die it's the same as if everybody else died too.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down.”

Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Context: The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of this world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

Secret , World , Fear

“If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creatures could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet?”

Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Context: And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.

God

“There is for a man two things in life that are very important, head and shoulders above everything else. Find work you like, and find someone to live with you like. Very few people get both.”

Cormac McCarthy
Life , People

“…. A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They’re always more trouble than what they’re worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Horse

“A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with.”

Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

“Hard weather, says the old man. So let it be. Wrap me in the weathers of the earth, I will be hard and hard. My face will wash rain like the stones.”

Cormac McCarthy book Suttree

Source: Suttree

Weather

“This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Dead

“Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen the horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance. - The judge”

Cormac McCarthy

Source: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

War , Learning , Heart , Dance

“The man watched him. Real life is pretty bad?

What do you think?

Well, I think we're still here. A lot of bad things have happened but we're still here.

Yeah.

You don't think that's so great.

It's okay.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Life , Thinking

“You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”

Cormac McCarthy

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter II
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Context: A man’ s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

God , Evil

“You think people was meaner then than they are now? the deputy said.
The old man was looking out at the flooded town. No, he said, I don't. I think people are the same from the day God first made one.”

Cormac McCarthy book Child of God

Source: Child of God (1973), p.158

God , People , Thinking

“Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can acquaint himself with everything on this earth, he said.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

“The old man … said … the notion that men can be understood was probably an illusion.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Men

“He said the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose. He said that true evil has power to sober the smalldoer against his own deeds and in the contemplation of that evil he may even find the path of righteousness which has been foreign to his feet and may have no power but to go upon it. Even this man may be appalled at what is revealed to him and seek some order to stand against it. Yet in all of this there are two things which perhaps he will not know. He will not know that while the order which the righteous seek is never righteousness itself but is only order, the disorder of evil is in fact the thing itself. Nor will he know that while the righteous are hampered at every turn by their ignorance of evil to the evil all is plain, light and dark alike. This man of which we speak will seek to impose order and lineage upon things which rightly have none. He will call upon the world itself to testify as to the truth of what are in fact but his desires. In his final incarnation he may seek to indemnify his words with blood for by now he will have discovered that words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

Men , Pain , Truth , World